Thursday, July 25, 2013

Day 9 of the voter ID trial was occupied mostly with a
heated debate about the efforts of plaintiffs’ statistical expert (Dr. Siskin,
who testified on day 2 of the trial) to quantify the number of Pennsylvania
voters who lack adequate photo ID, and whether a more precise count is possible.

Previously, Dr. Siskin had calculated that 511,415
registered voters listed in the official SURE voter database would lack an ID
valid for voting under the voter ID law from PennDOT or the Department of State
(DOS).Today, the commonwealth offered
the testimony of Dr. William Wecker in a weak attempt to demonstrate that Dr.
Siskin’s analysis was so imprecise as to be unreliable.The theme of Wecker’s critique of Dr.
Siskin’s statistical analysis was that Dr. Siskin could and should have
accounted for additional circumstances that might reduce the total number of
disenfranchised voters.

On cross examination, plaintiffs’ counsel (Mike Rubin, of
Arnold & Porter) systematically dismantled each of Wecker’s suggested
methods of generating a more “reliable” count of voters who lack ID.

One of Wecker’s more significant criticisms of Dr. Siskin
was that Siskin did not measure and account for voters who lack a state-issued
ID but do have a student ID that meets the voter ID requirements.Wecker argued that such a measurement would
have significantly reduced Siskin’s tally of voters without ID, and he attempted
to demonstrate that such a calculation is possible by using geo-coded data to
determine the number of voters aged 18-28 who lived within a 1-mile radius of each
of Pennsylvania’s colleges and universities.Using this method, Wecker concluded that there were 48,046 people who
likely had access to a student ID that could be used for voting and should thus
have been excluded from Siskin’s list.

As Rubin walked Wecker through this calculation, nearly every
assumption underlying Wecker’s analysis fell apart, revealing that Wecker’s
calculation dramatically overstated the number of registered voters who could
rely on a student ID to vote.

First, Wecker admitted that he had arrived at the conclusion
that there were 48,000 voters with student ID by counting every Pennsylvania
college or university that was eligible
to issue student IDs that could be used to vote, including the schools that had
elected not to issue such IDs.Wecker conceded that he had not attempted to
determine which schools on his list actually issued valid voter IDs.Although defendants possessed this
information and produced it in discovery, they did not provide it to Wecker,
and he did not ask them for it.

Next, Rubin demonstrated to the Court that Wecker’s method
of determining how many registered PA voters attended each school by drawing 1-mile-radius
circles around the school bordered on the absurd when applied to non-rural
schools. Rubin showed the Court a map
illustrating Wecker’s “catchment areas” for the Philadelphia schools that issue
valid student voting IDs, which covered huge swaths of Philadelphia’s Center
City and several other neighborhoods.When
this map was expanded to include the schools that Wecker had counted that were
merely eligible to start issuing such IDs, the catchment
areas swept in breathtaking expanses of Philadelphia’s densely populated urban
centers.Rubin performed the same
exercise with a map of Pittsburgh that showed only the schools there that Wecker
had counted that were not issuing
valid student IDs, which virtually blanketed all of Pittsburgh and accounted
for thousands of people whom Wecker incorrectly assumed had access to appropriate
student ID.

Despite Wecker’s emphatic refrain that Dr. Siskin’s analysis
was so limited as to be unreliable, Wecker conceded, over and over, that there
were inherent limitations on the data available. Wecker stated at various times that it was a
“fool’s errand” to try to come up with an actual count of voters without ID by
comparing the SURE and PennDOT and DOS databases, and that he didn’t expect it
could be done “perfectly” or that there was a “perfect” method or number
available.“It’s just as hard for me as
it is for [Dr. Siskin],” Wecker conceded, describing his own calculations as a
“rough cut” and “not terribly refined.”Confronted
repeatedly with the astounding shortcomings in his own methodology, Wecker
ultimately suggested that his flawed calculations were nonetheless damning
because they indicated there could be “some” people on Siskin’s list who should
be excluded, and protested that he didn’t have “time, or a chance, or a need”
to figure out whether there was a more reliable statistical method available to
Dr. Siskin.Wecker was merely there to
point out that there were possible limitations in Siskin’s process — a fact
Siskin already pointed out himself.

Trial resumes on Tuesday, July 30, at 9:15 a.m. with
testimony from Jonathan Marks, Commissioner of the Bureau of Commissions,
Elections, and Legislation with the Pennsylvania Department of State.